How to Use POS Data to Achieve Personalized Marketing Like the Big Guys

April 18, 2017 |
Jeff Cohen

As a small business owner, you’re probably always keeping an eye on KPIs like daily sales numbers, top selling products, and returns by cashier. For the most part, you can access this kind of information right from your Point of Sale system. What the POS does not do, however, is associate these transactions to an individual customer. Sure, if you’re a clothing store and you know how many customers bought denim jeans, this is useful from an inventory and purchasing decision, but what about from a marketing standpoint?

Why personalized marketing?

Today’s customers have grown to expect more and more personalized experiences from the brands they interact with. Personalized marketing has a proven track record for higher redemption rates and greater consumer spending. Unfortunately, many small businesses are limited by the fact that their only data source is their POS.

Imagine knowing which customers bought a specific product, and have the means to contact each one of them. With this level of insight, your marketing communications become extremely personalized. Here are a few examples of the kinds of marketing campaigns you can run once you’ve tied POS data with customer identities:

Refill reminder: A nutrition shop can learn customer buying cycles and market to their clients accordingly. If a customer consistently visits the store every 2 months to pick up their vitamins, an automated reminder can be sent to that individual shopper if they break from that buying pattern. The message can even be personalized with the particular brand of vitamins that customer purchases. This machine learning technology is so powerful because you are communicating with your customer base in such a personalized way ensuring they are receiving the right offer at the right time.

Amazon-style recommendations: Better yet, you can understand buying behaviors like items frequently purchased together. With this level of insight, you’re able to identify opportunities to deliver Amazon-style recommendations. A toy store, for example, can see that customers who purchase a specific brand of dolls often buy doll accessories. They can then set a trigger that automatically delivers a coupon for doll accessories to customers who purchased the doll but not the accessories.

Brand switch: Having a full grasp on consumer trends can provide insightful opportunities beyond discounts and promotions. A grocery store, for example, can incentivize customers to purchase higher profit margin items like a store brand of a bottle of ketchup, olive oil, BBQ sauce, etc. which are comparable to the national brand items they’re already buying.

Big-box technology for small businesses

AppCard is a third generation loyalty and rewards platform that captures customer identities in addition to SKU-level purchase information, and works with any POS. When a customer makes a purchase, they simply key in their phone number, and AppCard sends their purchase information to the AppCard CRM. From there, business owners have the opportunity to create targeted campaigns via SMS, email, or push notifications. Visit AppCard to learn more!

About Jeff Cohen

I am the inbound sales manager at AppCard. I manage the process of all inbound inquiries from various lead generation sources. With my entire sales career being in the brick and mortar retail space, my experience helps small business owners build their brand and boost profits.